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Jewish World Review
April 5, 2005
/ 25 Adar II, 5765
Sharon's folly
By
Daniel Pipes
The Israeli prime minister not only betrayed those who voted for him but his legally dubious move will have many malign consequences
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
With the passage last week of a budget bill in Israel, the government of Ariel Sharon appears to be ready to remove over
8,000 Israelis living in Gaza, if necessary with force.
In addition to the legal dubiousness of this step and its historical unprecedented nature (challenge to the reader: name another
democracy that has forcibly removed thousands its own citizens from their lawful homes), the planned withdrawal of all Israeli
installations from Gaza amounts to an act of monumental political folly.
It also comes as an astounding surprise. After the Oslo round of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations (1993-2001) ended in disaster,
many Israelis looked back on Oslo's faulty assumptions, their own naïveté, and resolved not to repeat that bitter experience.
Israelis awoke from the delusion that giving the Palestinians land, money, and arms in return for airy-fairy and fraudulent
promises would lessen Palestinian hostility. They realized that, to the contrary, this imbalance enhanced Palestinian rejection of
the very existence of the Jewish state.
By early 2001, a riven Israeli electorate had largely re-unified. When Ariel Sharon became prime minister in February 2001, a
wiser leadership had apparently taken over in Jerusalem, one that recognized the need for Israel to return to toughness and
deterrence.
These optimistic expectations were indeed fulfilled for nearly three years, 2001-03. Sharon engaged in a quite masterful double
diplomacy in which he simultaneously showed a cheery face (toward the American government and his leftist coalition partners)
and a tough one (toward his Likud constituents and the Palestinians). The purposefulness and underlying consistency of his
premiership from the start impressed many observers, including this one; I assessed Sharon's record to be "a virtuoso
performance of quietly tough actions mixed with voluble concessions."
Sharon decisively won re-election in January 2003 over Amram Mitzna, a Labor opponent who advocated an Oslo-style unilateral retreat from Gaza. Sharon unambiguously condemned this idea back then: "A unilateral withdrawal is not a recipe for
peace. It is a recipe for war." After winning the election, his talks in February 2003 about forming a coalition government with
Mitzna failed because Sharon so heavily emphasized the "strategic importance" of Israelis living in Gaza.
By December 2003, however, Sharon himself endorsed Mitzna's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. While he did so in a spirit
very different from the prior Oslo diplomacy, his decision has the same two main characteristics.
First, because the decision to retreat from Gaza took place in the context of heightened violence against Israelis, it vindicates
those Palestinian voices arguing for terrorism. The Gaza retreat is, in plain words, a military defeat. It follows on the
ignominious Israeli abandonment of its positions and its allies in Lebanon in May 2000, a move which much eroded Arab
respect for Israeli strength, with dire consequences. The Gaza withdrawal will almost certainly increase Palestinian reliance on
terrorism.
Second, the retreat is heating up the political climate within Israel, bringing back the dangerous mood of exaggeration, incivility,
hostility, and even lawlessness. The prospect of thousands of Israelis evicted from their homes under threat of force is rudely
interrupting what had been a trend toward a more healthy atmosphere during the relative calm of 2001-03.
Sharon's plans at least have a disillusioned quality to them, sparing Israel the wooly notions of a "new Middle East" that so
harmed the country a decade ago. But in another way, Sharon's plans are worse than Oslo; at least that disaster was carried
out by the clueless Left. A Right — led by Ariel Sharon — valiantly and staunchly opposed it. This time, it is the Right's hero
who, allied with the far-Left, is himself leading the charge, reducing the opposition to marginality.
There are many theories for what reversed Sharon's views on the matter of a unilateral Gaza withdrawal in the ten months
between February and December 2003 — I have my own ideas about the hubris of elected Israeli prime ministers — but
whatever the reason, its consequences are clear.
Sharon betrayed the voters who supported him, wounding Israeli democracy. He divided Israeli society in ways that may
poison the body politic for decades hence. He aborted his own successful policies vis-à-vis the Palestinians. He delivered
Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim rejectionists their greatest boost ever. And he failed his American ally by delivering a major
victory to the forces of terrorism.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading."
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JWR contributor Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum.
© 2005, Daniel Pipes
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